In this interview, Abigail Chabitnoy walks us through her experiences as a student, writer, and poet seeking publication. She was a 2016 Peripheral Poets fellow, and her poems have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Boston Review, Tin House, Gulf Coast, and Red Ink, among others.

In our November episode, the CR Podcast sits down with the winner of Crazyhorse‘s 2018 Crazyshorts! Short Fiction Contest, Aliceanna Stopher. Listen to the podcast here: Episode 40. Become a subscriber to the Colorado Review podcast! Just search “Colorado Review” in the iTunes store or follow this link.

But what happens when a beloved book becomes a movie? Honestly, my first thought is “oh no.” Why? Because so often the movie lets me down, ruins my imagined world, and refuses to bring to life the best parts of the book.

By Colorado Review Associate Editor and Podcast Editor Evan Senie The most tiring, frustrating, and wonderful part of my experience at the Center for Literary Publishing this semester has been taking over podcast-hosting duties with Daniel Schonning. We try to produce one podcast episode per month, which seems like it should be easy, and I […]

Using trial transcripts, witness testimonies, interviews, medical descriptions, and more, Rukeyser documents a nonlinear account of the industrial disaster through voices both real and imagined. Throughout, she never loses sight of the potential problematics of documentary poetry (voyeurism, appropriation, etc.) and this inquiry into her own method is an integral part of the poem.

One of the things I’ve come to understand about artistic pursuits, or at least about mine, is that they are anything but linear. Sometimes one needs to push the limits only to retrace origins and vice versa. So it is that I began exploring seemingly oppositional forces at play in art in general, and subsequently, in written mediums.

On the faces of my students when I suggest they submit their work for publication: flattery, confusion. And I get it—no one taught me how to submit, how to find journals I admire, how to know when a piece is ready. The prospect can be daunting when you’re starting out.

In our August episode, podcast editors Evan Senie and Daniel Schonning take a look at poems and stories of past editions of the Colorado Review, including selections from E. E. Cummings, Langston Hughes, Ray Bradbury, Aimee Bender, and others. Listen to the podcast here: Episode 39. Become a subscriber to the Colorado Review podcast! Just search “Colorado Review” […]

In our July episode, editor-in-chief Stephanie G’Schwind, incoming podcast editor Evan Senie, and poet and MFA candidate Margaret Browne join podcast editor Meghan Pipe to give a preview of the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in the new Summer 2018 issue. Listen to the podcast here: Episode 38. Become a subscriber to the Colorado Review podcast! […]

In our June episode, podcast editor Meghan Pipe is joined by incoming podcast editor Evan Senie, who will read an excerpt from Benjamin Soileau’s “Boosh Bourgeois.” The story appears in the upcoming Summer 2018 issue of Colorado Review. Then, they’ll be joined by Soileau via phone to chat about the story and Soileau’s work. Listen […]

In our May episode, podcast editor Meghan Pipe dives into the archives to read Jennifer Itell’s essay “Moonwalk” from the Fall/Winter 2017 issue. Listen to the podcast here: Episode 36. Become a subscriber to the Colorado Review podcast! Just search “Colorado Review” in the iTunes store or follow this link.

By Colorado Review Associate Editor David Mucklow The end of the MFA is an inevitably strange experience, full of sort of empty landmarks of finality­­­­: turning in your thesis, defending your thesis, writing your last paper, grading your last paper, attending your last class, having your thesis formally accepted by the graduate school (a task […]

The best and most helpful thing for me was that NaNoWriMo had a well-established dedicated young adult page. There were workbooks, progress sheets, and suggestions for teachers. It was amazing. I went home the first day and rabbit-holed for hours.

Our short and sweet April episode features poems from the pages of Colorado Review, each chosen and read by a staff member of the journal. Listen to the podcast for poems by Shauna Barbosa, Ansley Clark, Paige Lewis, Luiza Flynn-Goodlett, and Isaac Ginsberg Miller: Episode 35. Become a subscriber to the Colorado Review podcast! Just […]

“. . . they cut the psychopaths, the murderers and rapists and abusers, down to size. It’s not to take revenge—but it does rob these men of their power to amaze, to baffle, to be seen as some sort of living legend.”

You, by yourself, writing. You, alone, making that thing. That’s poetry. And when you die, that goes away. AWP goes on. But when you die there will never be another Fran poem or Cate poem or Michael poem. Don’t forget that.

In February’s episode, associate editors Sam Killmeyer and Zach Yanowitz chat with Lauren Haldeman, author of Instead of Dying, winner of the 2017 Colorado Prize for Poetry. Listen to the podcast here: Episode 33. Become a subscriber to the Colorado Review podcast! Just search “Colorado Review” in the iTunes store or follow this link.

I found that openness of form, softness of sound and image, and sincerity in tone suggest new ways I might approach poems as a writer and reader, and too, how I might more gently and generously approach my daily interactions with those around me.

I will always marvel at all you short story writers out there, who make me feel intense emotions in such a small amount of space and time. There’s a special magic in them that has taught me lessons about novel writing before I’ve even had a chance to realize I was learning them.

In January’s episode, podcast editor Lauren Matheny reads Katie M. Flynn’s “Island Rule,” winner of the 2017 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, from the Fall/Winter 2017 issue. Listen to the podcast here: Episode 32. Become a subscriber to the Colorado Review podcast! Just search “Colorado Review” in the iTunes store or follow this link.

Author Marianne Apostolides’s Deep Salt Water (see our recent review here) is a powerful and fearless memoir which weaves together the theme of abortion and climate change. This work combines strong individual recollections with the more global idea of the collapse of our natural environment. Eric Maroney: I see this work as having many layers. […]

Later in life, looking back on his involvement, he is overcome by guilt. However, despite the insight of old age, the true terms and consequences of his decision to join the Germans remain somewhat obscure to him.

I care about the narrator and am curious about what happens next. I want to read the next sentence and then the next. I forget about stretching, or the room temperature, or the fact that I didn’t eat breakfast before arriving at work. I’m only thinking about the essay. For a few minutes, the whole world is this essay.

We maintain the false notion that literature must, or can somehow be completely original, pure, a work of genius, without questioning what exactly those terms mean, and how no writing is devoid of influence.

In November’s episode, editor-in-chief Stephanie G’Schwind and managing editor Katherine Indermaur join podcast editor Meghan Pipe to chat about the new Fall/Winter 2017 issue. Listen to the podcast here: Episode 30. Become a subscriber to the Colorado Review podcast! Just search “Colorado Review” in the iTunes store or follow this link.

During my time at the CLP, I not only get to see how the inside of a publishing house operates, but I also get to work alongside people producing content much like that submitted to the CLP for publication. I have learned just as much about the process of selecting a piece for publication as I have about the process that goes into making a publishable piece of work.

The English language is a system, albeit a wonky and sometimes counterintuitive one. Writers can certainly choose to break the rules of that system, but it helps for us to first be aware of the rules from which we’re departing.

In October’s episode, podcast editor Meghan Pipe dives into the archives to read Katherine Hill’s “Waste Management,” winner of the 2010 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction (Fall/Winter 2010 issue). Then, Hill joins in via phone to chat about the Nelligan Prize and how her writing life has unfolded since winning. Listen to the podcast here: […]

In the past several weeks, I have read submissions about war and horrific physical injuries, debilitating ailments and incurable diseases, families shattered by divorce or marital infidelity, death and suicide, drug addiction and abuse, homophobia, transphobia, and so many other sources of trauma that I often find myself ruminating on these narratives well after my shift at the Center for Literary Publishing has ended.

In Colorado Review’s July 2017 podcast, we veer from our typical format for a round-table chat with podcast editors Lauren Matheny and Meghan Pipe, editor-in-chief Stephanie G’Schwind, and associate editor David Mucklow. Tune in as we share personal highlights from the Summer 2017 issue, gush about our favorite lit journals, and talk about how our […]

In order to keep this daily poetry need stress-free, I’ve been actively seeking out daily poetry emails and services. I thought that you too, in your daily stresses, joys, and attention to spring weather, might also want to enjoy this stress-free daily poetry, and so I’ve compiled a list of places to sign up for and read poems.

Not that being odd is currently under literary attack or anything, but I’ve been thinking about how certain pieces of writing are perfectly misshapen—a trapezoidal-peg-round-hole sort of thing—just enough to defy clear categorization.

In Colorado Review’s April 2017 podcast, podcast editors Lauren Matheny and Meghan Pipe sit down with Ada Limón, author of Bright Dead Things, finalist for the 2015 National Book Award in Poetry. Limón visited Colorado State University earlier this month through the CSU Creative Writing Reading Series. Listen to the podcast here! (Episode 23)

I admitted, then, like a secret or a dare, “I’ve found myself writing preach, mama in the margins of the books I’m reading,” which has been the biggest puzzle to emerge out of many otherwise subtle changes.

Seeking out female writers isn’t something I’ve done consciously per se, rather the work I find so fascinating, the work I think is most exciting and brave and honest right now, happens to be by women and this feels important and true to me.

By Colorado Review Associate Editor Zach Yanowitz I’m a poet. I’m in graduate school for poetry. As a result, that’s largely what I write and read. Sure, I’ve been obsessively keeping up with the news for the last few months and I read my fair share of comic books, but part of me sort of […]

By Colorado Review Associate Editor Cory Cotten-Potter Anyone who’s ever been a member of a workshop, writing group, or any impromptu conversation among readers and writers knows that we all have a different aesthetic. And that, as a whole, they’re reasonably hard to describe. Ideally an aesthetic would indicate some sort of definable set, a […]

By Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Kristin Macintyre A few days ago I, along with the literary community at Colorado State University, had the honor of listening to two writers read their work at the Gregory Allicar Museum of Art on campus. Rachel Hall, a visiting fiction writer from SUNY-Geneseo, read a beautiful short story from […]

By Colorado Review Associate Editor Beth Stoneburner On any given afternoon, when not in class or working on school-related things, you will typically find me at home with a cat or two and several social media tabs open on my laptop: Facebook, WordPress, and Twitter. It’s the last one, however, that’s been most beneficial to […]

by Colorado Review Associate Editor Meghan Pipe Today in a literature class on postmodernism—I am the teaching assistant in this upper-level course for undergraduates—we got to talking about politics in art, and whether that P-word should have a place in art at all. One student suggested that art should come from individual experience and not […]

by Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Christa Shively I am sitting on my couch, in my living room, in a place that I have staked, flagged, and signed on the dotted line for. My neighborhood is made up of parcels of earth, homogenized snippets of ground, dovetail lots containing homes, yards, and mailboxes. Each driveway has identical […]

by Colorado Review Associate Editor KT Heins I recently finished Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen on a flight back from Mobile, Alabama. My grandfather died on Sunday, January 15th in the evening, in his sleep. My father gave me Born to Run to read on the plane. As my father handed me the heavy, […]

Join Colorado Review’s podcast editor Kylan Rice, associate editor Kristin Macintyre, and authors Paige Lewis and Rusty Morrison as they read and discuss several of the poems featured in the Fall 2016 issue of the journal. Listen to the podcast here! (Episode 21)

By Lauren Matheny, Colorado Review Associate Editor My name is Lauren, and I am a fiction writer. A fiction MFA candidate. And I have a confession: the last three books I’ve read have been nonfiction. I think I have a problem. I feel, however, that this shift might be global rather than personal. Or maybe […]

By Katherine Indermaur, Colorado Review Assistant Managing Editor It’s a new year, so I’ve resolved to take a look at all those books I’ve been meaning to read—or lying to my friends about having read—for years. We all keep our own mental lists of books that we are embarrassed to admit we haven’t yet read. […]

By Alex Morrison, Colorado Review Associate Editor The holiday season approaches, and maybe you are unsure about what to give your friends. You know that a book always makes a good gift, but if you are like me, you tend to give books that you want to read, have read, or think that the recipient […]

By Chelsea Hansen, Colorado Review Associate Editor Every writer has heard that infamous phrase: “Write what you know.” And, like me, most writers have probably railed against it. I first heard this when I was nineteen and in my first-ever workshop. My professor at the time had gone off on an unintended rant on the subject. […]

By Cole Konopka, Colorado Review Associate Editor I love the contemporary literary moment. I love it in many ways. I love the grassroots rhizome of small presses and journals doing unique work all over the world. I love the schools that offer refuge to write among others who write. The contemporary literary moment is in […]

Compiled by CL Young, Colorado Review Associate Editor This week, the Colorado Review and CSU poetry communities offer a list of some of the poems we return to when we need strength, reassurance, grounding, and reminders of beauty and empathy. Dan Beachy-Quick, Book Review Editor (poetry) & Associate Professor of Creative Writing: Gerard Manley […]

By Morgan Riedl, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Recently, I attended a storytelling event with a friend. After the performance, we discussed what it’s like to write and share stories, and agreed to send each other a story we’d written. Shortly after I got home, my phone buzzed with a text: “I’m so nervous for you […]

By Michelle LaCrosse, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Have you ever wanted to tell a story about some far-off place that only exists in your imagination? Or struggled to describe something that’s in your head and yet just cannot seem to translate it to the page? Maybe you’re using the wrong word. Maybe the right word […]

Join Colorado Review’s podcast editor Kylan Rice and poet Mike Lala as they read and discuss a selection of poems from Exit Theater (2016), this year’s winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry. Listen to the podcast here! (Episode 18)

By Sam Killmeyer, Colorado Review Associate Editor This summer I was lucky enough to work in some way on the three books of poems the Center for Literary Publishing will release this year: Exit Theater, &Luckier, and Escape Velocity. Up until this point I thought of bookmaking as something magical, attainable only by ‘real’ poets, […]

By Yash Seyedbagheri, Colorado Review Associate Editor When you envision stories being rejected at a literary journal, you might imagine a group of men and women in trench coats and fedoras, sitting around rejecting people with a certain glee, tossing manuscripts into the garbage can as they laugh jovially. And the fact is that isn’t true, […]

By Emily Ziffer, Colorado Review Associate Editor A few weeks ago I went rock climbing in Rocky Mountain National Park with two guys with whom I recently started training at the gym. I’ve been climbing competitively since middle school and because of this most of my life has been a series of balancing acts between academic […]

By Alex Morrison, Colorado Review Associate Editor It is no secret that graduate students spend a majority of their time reading, rarely for fun, and often more than a book a week. We all develop different strategies to cope with an ever-increasing workload, whether by learning to read on the go, the art of skimming, or […]

Recent years have seen an increasing interest in erasure poetry, in which a poet creates a new text by selectively erasing from another author’s pre-existing text. Poets Kristina Marie Darling and Sam Taylor are both practitioners of “self-erasure,” in which they first write their own text and then erase part of it. Taylor and Darling both developed […]

Join Colorado Review’s podcast editor Kylan Rice and poet Emily Pérez, author of House of Sugar, House of Stone, selected for the Mountain West Poetry Series in 2016, out from the Center for Literary Publishing. Listen to the podcast here! (Episode 16)

by Zach Yanowitz, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant As the school year winds down I’ve been thinking about how to spend my summer Free Time, a concept that my life seems to have forgotten since beginning my MFA in August. I have decided that Summer 2016 is going to be the Summer of Consumption. I should […]

By David Mucklow, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Since starting my MFA and working at the Center for Literary Publishing, I’ve discovered a lot of new books of poetry. That has been probably one of the most exciting and helpful experiences as I start to work on my own full-length manuscript of poetry. With so much […]

Join Colorado Review’s podcast editor Kylan Rice and poet Bonnie Arning at AWP Los Angeles as they read and discuss Arning’s poem “Black Acres,” which can be found in the Spring 2016 edition of the journal. Listen to the podcast here! (Episode 15)

by Cory Cotten-Potter, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Here’s the thing: I still think of writing as physical, the written word being just that, written. Reading words on the page and creating meaning is a strange act, an attempt to connect to places and people I’ll never see, people and places that I, as the reader, […]

by Melissa Hohl, Colorado Review, Associate Editor Samuel Beckett said that, not me. (The Unnamable is a weird and wonderful work of art, as is the whole of Beckett’s trilogy.) What’s on my mind right now: • This is my final blog post for Colorado Review (!!!) before I graduate. • I turn in my thesis to my committee […]

by Cole Konopka, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant In one of the many warnings I received as an undergraduate writer, a poet and teacher once broke down the hourly wage of writing (and editing) a poem for eventual publication. The $50 payment spread itself over many hours, until minimum wage seemed idealistic to hope for. Somehow […]

by Abigail Kerstetter, Colorado Review Associate Editor It’s always a strange thing, spending a weekend in devotion to writing, in the company of thousands of other writers, publishers, and general lovers of words at various stages of their careers, some well-seasoned in navigating what can quickly become a hall of mirrors, others just entering this […]

by Emily Harnden, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant The first short story I ever fell in love with, the kind of love that happens only once or twice when you are young and hopeful and vulnerable to getting your heart punctured, was, predictably, “How to Become a Writer,” by Lorrie Moore. That whip-smart opening—“First, try to […]

Join Colorado Review’s podcast editor Kylan Rice, staff member Cole Konopka, and poet Stephanie Lenox as they read and discuss Lenox’s book The Business, new release and Colorado Prize for Poetry winner from the Center for Literary Publishing. Listen to the podcast here! (Episode 14)

by John McDonough, Colorado Review, Associate Editor A confession: Despite being in the third year of my MFA program, an editor at two literary journals, and a teacher of creative writing, I’m not a good reader. That’s not to say I can’t do it—I can, of course (and probably know a slightly above-average number of words, in […]

by CL Young, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Around the middle of last year, the age restriction on the Yale Younger Poets Prize was lifted, opening the competition (previously available only to poets under the age of 40) to emerging poets of any age. The Yale Prize has been around for nearly one-hundred years and has […]

Last year Colorado Review published a review of Jill Magi’s 2014 LABOR. In early 2016, Magi and the reviewer, Sean Pears, continued the conversation on the emerging role of the university in an era of neoliberal reform, the value of humanities instruction in the twenty-first century, and the possible terms of solidarity between and across […]

by Shoaib Alam, Colorado Review Associate Editor Literature is coming to the streets (again), and it’s disguised as coffee sleeves, fast food, and tanks. The Atlantic explores the guerilla-marketing techniques being deployed to promote reading worldwide in this article. The city of Grenoble, France, leads the pack with machines that vend stories according to reading time—one-minute, three-minutes […]

by Katie Naughton, Colorado Review Associate Editor It’s late January, which means that it is reading season at the Center for Literary Publishing for the editors and judges who will select one manuscript to be published as the winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry and two manuscripts to be published in the Mountain West Poetry […]

Join Colorado Review’s podcast editor Kylan Rice, editor Stephanie G’Schwind, and Dean Sangalis as they read and discuss the short story “The Wisdom of Sons” by Thomas White from the Spring 2009 issue. Listen to the podcast here! (Episode 12)

by Chelsea Hansen, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Every time I move I’m amazed by the amount of books I own; more than half of my boxes will be full of books. They recently graduated, after my last move, from orderly piles on the floor to a second bookshelf, which has room for approximately four more […]

by Dan Beachy-Quick, Colorado Review Poetry Reviews Editor When I first encountered Agnes Martin’s paintings, those grids too easily subsumed by the name Minimalism, I felt a mute appreciation. But over the years I’ve found myself, in every museum I visit, searching out her work, feeling not a mute appreciation on discovering one, but a […]

Join Colorado Review’s podcast editor Kylan Rice, editor Matthew Cooperman, and Melissa Hohl as they read and discuss “Going Back to Thira” by Rachel Mennies and “Five Years Later” by Brittany Cavallaro, two poems from the Fall 2015 issue. Listen to the podcast here! (Episode 11)

by Angela Mergentime, Colorado Review Associate Editor As a graduate student pursuing a master’s in English Literature, I have to shift my literary gears each time I read submissions for Colorado Review. I’ve lately been spending a lot of time reading historical and theoretical material for my master’s project—in addition to my ongoing habit of […]

Before I moved to Colorado, I considered leaving my television behind. I wanted to break my sense of continuity, throw a wrench in the cyclical nature of routine, and the TV was an obvious source of time-suck, a passive activity that conflicted with my creative pursuits, specifically writing.

To me, voice is an important element of docupoetics. Voice insists on the personal and the human within historical, political, cultural, and everyday documents and/or the documentation the past and the present.

Writing would be even more solitary a pursuit without the exposure to new voices and ideas that literary journals offer up to us. By supporting these places, you’re keeping our writing community a vibrant one.

by Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Writer’s block. These are two words that any writer dreads, especially in an MFA program, a place where time is not a luxury and where we’re always aware that we’re part of a select few. It creeps upon us like a shadow, lingering for the longest periods of […]

by Stewart Moore, Colorado Review editorial assistant I have several friends who say they love driving long distances. They relish the opportunity to burn down the highway, see the landscape change before their eyes, and jam out to five hours of music. I, however, hate driving. Not only because I can’t sit still for more […]

by Alex Morrison, Colorado Review editorial assistant Last month, I was hosting a friend from Baltimore while he used Fort Collins as a launching point to explore Rocky Mountain National Park. I was giving my friend a quick tour of my apartment when he stopped to inspect my bookshelf, a narrow and flimsy piece of […]

Katherine E. Standefer writes about the body, consent, and medical technology. Her essay “Shock to the Heart, Or: A Primer on the Practical Applications of Electricity” appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of Colorado Review. She generously agreed to share her thoughts on her craft with Natalya Stanko, Colorado Review associate editor. Natalya Stanko: […]

To read a review of Tanvi Bush’s Witch Girl, click here. Book reviewer Heather Sharfeddin recently interviewed Tanvi Bush for Colorado Review. Bush grew up in Lusaka, Zambia. She later studied in the UK, reading English and Theatre at Exeter University, then Film Production at the Northern School of Film and TV. In the late […]

by Cedar Brant, Colorado Review editorial assistant The most shocking thing happens when your work is published: people read it. Although this is, of course, the basic idea, it is nonetheless miraculous. Publication is the crucible that transforms the private tomes of one’s journal into, in the spirit of John Keats, “a handshake,” an act […]

By Melissa Hohl, Colorado Review Associate Editor “It’s like Vegas in here. There are no clocks and it could be any time of day or night outside and we would have no idea” –John Gallaher on the AWP book fair I spent most of the daytime during AWP at the book fair, either walking around […]

By Bryan C. Johnson, Colorado Review Associate Editor As I approach the end of my MFA experience, I’ve been thinking more and more about what my writing life will look like post-degree. For the past three years, I’ve had a decent amount of free time (I’m not an adjunct, or I would have no free […]

By Shoaib Alam, Colorado Review Associate Editor Literary awards are all over the news recently. Here at Colorado Review, submissions closed not too long ago for the 2015 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction. The winner will be announced in July. The final judge is Lauren Groff. Meanwhile, Akhil Sharma won the second Folio prize for […]

By Andrew Mangan, Colorado Review Associate Editor We are living in a post-Serial world in which podcasting has broken into the mainstream and proven itself to be a serious form of media. And having recently revamped our podcast here at Colorado Review, I wanted to put together a list of a few other blue-chip podcasts […]

By Nathaniel Barron, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant I recently received a book to review for the Center for Literary Publishing. I was excited; the author had impressive publications and credentials, and the blurb on the back cover was from a recent Pulitzer Prize–winning author (who shall henceforth be referred to as PPWA). According to PPWA, […]

A certain approach to poetry marvels the mundane. It takes those daily chores that seem to threaten a meaningful life and inverts the equation, so that doing the chores becomes its own sacred mediation.

by Marie Turner, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant I’ve been thinking lately about the issue of taste. I think it’s been on my mind because of recent instances in both my professional and student lives that have made me think about how when we publish (or attempt to publish) something, there are an extraordinary number of […]

By Abigail Kerstetter, Colorado Review Associate Editor As a poet, one of the things I find myself agonizing over most in my own work is the physical arrangement of the words on the page—the need to insert silence, or to hurry the reader along; to make connections, or to instruct the reader how the poem […]

By John McDonough, Colorado Review Associate Editor The queue. The slush pile. The drawer. I’m sure there are other names out there (many unpublishable), all of which speak to dreaded way journal editors and editorial assistants think about the submissions that both give them life and (seem to) threaten to take it away. So many […]

By Sarah Hansen, Colorado Review editorial assistant Holiday gift-giving is tricky even for people you know well, but what about the extremely difficult/wildcard people on your list? Sometimes you draw a weird name in Secret Santa or realize at the last minute that you don’t have a gift for someone who will be at dinner. […]

Reviewer Malissa Stark recently spoke with author Mike Meginnis about his powerful new novel, Fat Boy and Little Man. In this unusual book, Meginnis brings to life the bombs that fell on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, reimagining them as human characters. In the interview, Meginnis explains his creative process and how this book came into existence. […]

by Karen Montgomery Moore, Colorado Review Associate Editor Thoughts of genre, hybridity, and essays have somehow been central to both my work and my reading in 2014. At times, the label of “essay” seems to be applied as a fall-back, an admittance that there is not always an easy place to shelve work that ranges […]

With great sadness, we learned of Kent Haruf’s passing on Sunday, November 30. Author of the novels The Tie that Binds, Where You Once Belonged, Plainsong, Eventide, Benediction, and Our Souls at Night, he has long been a prominent voice in Colorado literature, specifically of Colorado’s northeastern plains, which don’t get much attention but whose […]

by Anitra Ingham, Colorado Review Associate Editor “Anything Good Is a Secret,” selected by Kent Nelson as the winner of the 2014 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, appears in the Fall/Winter 2014 issue of Colorado Review. The author, Amira Pierce, generously agreed to share her thoughts on the story with Associate Editor Anitra Ingham. […]

by Angela Mergentime, Colorado Review editorial assistant Here at Colorado Review, we’re big fans of The Chicago Manual of Style. We rely on it for guidance on how and when to use em dashes, en dashes, and hyphens. We turn to it when we can’t remember whether to use a figure or spell out a […]

by Cornelius FitzPatrick, Colorado Review Associate Editor The winner of the Man-Booker Prize for Fiction was announced yesterday, and the prize went to Australian author Richard Flanagan for his novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North. This year marked the first in the Booker’s 46-year history that the prize could be awarded to authors outside […]

by Kylan Rice, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant As in any niche community, for poets there seems to simmer a war of virtues when it comes to online publishing. I know many writers and creative writing faculty who initially expressed great suspicion and disdain at eschewing print for pixel, or for being solicited by new online […]

by Jayla Rae Ardelean, Colorado Review Associate Editor Sometimes I open up our nonfiction submissions queue and see “bird” in the title of an essay. My instinct is to click on it and dive in immediately. Around here, people know that the bulk of what I write about is birds, birding, and loving birds. (And […]

How do you know when something is good enough to publish? Colorado Review receives hundreds of submissions every month, over 9,000 submissions each year. Each is carefully read and considered by a team of editors, associate editors, and editorial assistants like me. I am a graduate student, working on a master’s degree in writing creative […]

by Drew Webster, Managing Editor, Colorado Review As you may have heard, last week the Alaska Quarterly Review received news that it may lose funding in the near future. I learned about it on Twitter. My feed was flecked with a new hashtag: “#SaveAQR.” In case you didn’t hear, the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) […]

by Jennifer Wisner Kelly, Book Review Editor for Fiction and Nonfiction If you’re a frequent reader of Colorado Review’s online book reviews, you might have noticed a recent trend in our fiction and nonfiction selections. Interspersed among exciting new titles from American writers, there are recent books in translation from around the world, published here […]

A Recommendation from our Poetry Reviews Editor, Dan Beachy-Quick Most of us read more than one book at a time. It’s a habit that at its worst leaves each book with less than full attention, an error that leaves—at least for me—worthy pages unread. Other times, reading more than one book at once reveals an […]

by Lincoln Greenhaw, Colorado Review Associate Editor Picture yourself in a busy coffee shop with a copper counter and a ceiling festooned with strings of large, old-fashioned lightbulbs. There is dark, atmospheric music playing. Now take a moment to look around the room and listen as the various conversations about marketing plans or Internet cats […]

By Stephanie G’Schwind, Editor The Center for Literary Publishing is perhaps best known for Colorado Review and the poetry books we publish for the Colorado Prize for Poetry and the Mountain West Poetry Series. But we have a new book out this month, something a little different—our first nonfiction anthology: Man in the Moon: Essays […]

By Abby Kerstetter, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Workers need poetry more than bread. They need that their life should be a poem. —Simone Weil “What are you looking for?” It’s the most frequently asked question, and it’s the hardest to answer. There are more opinions than poets, and more poems attempting to defend those opinions, […]

By John McDonough, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Let me come out and say it: the title of this essay is deceptive. I’m not here to construct a headstone, to bemoan the lack of popular interest in contemporary short fiction, or decry the work of my fellow writers as cliched or trite or regressive. No, I’m […]

by Melissa Hohl, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant What better way to celebrate National Poetry Month than to interview a dynamic poet? As Paul Hoover’s former student, I was excited to catch up with him and talk about everything from Tristan Tzara to Barry Wade of W.W. Norton & Company. Hoover’s poems, intelligence, and sense of […]

by Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Katie Naughton Danniel Schoonebeek is a friend, a former coworker, and one of my favorite poets. The first thing I knew about Colorado Review was the Summer 2012 issue, which included Danniel’s poem “Bildungsroman (Spare American)” and some of his Torch Songs in collaboration with Allyson Paty. I’m pleased to […]

Remember that time you got tickets to see your favorite band live at that arena? Remember how you wore the t-shirt of the band you were going to see? Remember how all of your friends laughed at you and called you a square/poser/lame-stream? Remember how they were all wearing Misfits t-shirts? In fact, remember how […]

by Jayla Rae Ardelean, Colorado Review editorial assistant Reading a story, essay, or poem on the page and feeling my eyes trail line by line is a revered act, almost as much as the construction of those lines by the writer themselves. I contract a certain commitment with the page, and if it’s good, I […]

by Steven Schwartz, Fiction Editor, Colorado Review I had just started as an assistant professor in 1984 at Colorado State University and was editing an issue of Colorado Review (called Colorado State Review back then). I wrote to Raymond Carver because I knew him a little from when I’d been a graduate student in the […]

by Shoaib Alam, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant The Internet is aflutter this week with news of new books that will be coming out this year. Haruki Murakami’s novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is expected to be a big hit in the US when it comes out in English this fall (translated […]

by Josh Randall, Colorado Review editorial assistant The first literary reading I attended was in a small coffee shop with one amp and one mic. My high school literary magazine, NHS Lit (we were very avant-garde), invited students who had submitted work to read in front of other anxious, still pimply high school students considered […]

by Kaelyn Riley, Colorado Review Associate Editor One day when I was in the fifth grade, my English teacher, Mr. Frye, assembled the class for a creative writing activity. On the whiteboard in his impeccable teacher cursive, he’d written a single line: The rooster sounded a cry of impending doom when… My task: finish the story. […]

by Cornelius Fitzpatrick, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Here at Colorado Review, our word for the infinite file of submissions is “the queue.” In my mind the mundane word has taken on a particular meaning, has grown a shadow. Last semester was my first as an editorial assistant here, and I lived in the queue. […]

A Possibly Failed Defense of Book-to-Film Adaptations by Andrew Mangan, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant I haven’t read Gone Girl, so when the news struck this week that Gillian Flynn and David Fincher, who are doing the filmic adaptation, rewrote the third act of the story, it fell on uncaring ears. My ears. My mother’s—different […]

by Ben Findlay, Colorado Review Associate Editor. “So many activities!” [1] I’ve taken on a variety of responsibilities during my time as an assistant and associate editor at the Center for Literary Publishing. I’ve read submissions, designed book covers, typeset issues of the magazine, and lots of other activities that have helped me develop a […]

Colorado Review Associate Editor Anitra Ingham talks with Edward Hamlin about his prize-winning story, “Night in Erg Chebbi,” which you can read here. Anitra Ingham: What inspired “Night in Erg Chebbi”? That is, how did the story originate? Edward Hamlin: I’ve been fascinated for some time with two themes that come together in the […]

by Samantha Tucker Iacovetto, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant As a creative nonfiction writer, I am constantly searching for new ways to write about realities, both my own, and others. Whether I am writing literary journalism, memoir, or personal essay—or reading all that the genre entails here at Colorado Review—I find the key to rich nonfiction […]

You know, I thought about switching up the music on this edition of Selections from Colorado Review. I thought, You know what’ll really get everyone all bent out of shape? If I put Christmas music on the podcast before Thanksgiving. That’ll really get ’em riled up. Anyone who has ever blogged professionally knows that riled […]

by Karen Montgomery Moore, Colorado Review editorial assistant The second week in November is a moment of limbo, a brief window in which time seems to slow, almost as a courtesy to the chilled air molecules, before the crazed days of deadlines and holidays. Conversely, it also a time when there is a flurry of […]

To say the Everglades are in trouble or the Florida panther is endangered are half-truths because such statements leave us humans out of the equation. We forget that what happens to the swamp and the wild cat happens to us.

by Derek Askey, Colorado Review associate fiction editor “Alice Munro was always an overrated writer,” claimed author Bret Easton Ellis via Twitter last week, “and now that she’s won the Nobel, she always will be.” This photo manages to capture only 1/16th of Ellis’ smugness. One has to hand it to Ellis, in the […]

by Drew Webster, editorial assistant Well, there’s really no other way to say it. It’s October again. There’s a chill in the evening air, knitted scarves and hats are becoming more prevalent, the aspen leaves are changing, the heady pong of pumpkin spice abounds, and to us here at the Center for Literary Publishing, it […]

by Jennifer Wisner Kelly, Fiction and Nonfiction Book Review Editor We’ve recently debuted a new approach at Colorado Review regarding our fiction and nonfiction reviews: seasonal themes. Themes serve as a lodestar for selecting from among the many titles released by small independent presses that are so worthy of being noticed, read, and lauded. For this […]

Back to school, back to school, you’re not too cool to go back to school. If you’re like me, then you’re not cool at all; however, you are—for once in your life—on time for something. That’s right! It’s the return of Selections from Colorado Review. This month’s podcast features Jessamyn Hope’s essay “The Running of the […]

Today, May 1, Ullr, dropped exactly forty gazillion inches of snow on Fort Collins, CO because apparently Norse gods don’t know when it’s spring already. Today, May 1, is also International Worker’s Day. Today, May 1, I am here at work (in sweatpants, but still). Apparently, today is one of those anything goes days. If […]

New Books in Poetry‘s John Ebersole has a great conversation with Kevin Goodan about his growing up on the Flathead Indian Reservation, fighting fires for the US Forest Service, his time in the MFA program at UMass, and his latest book, Upper Level Disturbances (Mountain West Poetry Series). Listen to the interview here.

Colorado Review associate editor Derek Askey shares his thoughts on, and some personal experience with, Goodreads, and its recent purchase by online bookseller Amazon. Now that the dust has, at least marginally, settled over Amazon’s acquisition of the social-media platform Goodreads, it seems sensible to touch on how such a change might affect a small press […]

MFA Thesis Reading: Mickey Kenny, Derek Askey, and Joanna Doxey by Brittany Goss, editorial assistant On March 29, 2013, the Hatton Gallery at the CSU Visual Arts Center was packed with the friends, teachers, students, and proud family members of third-year MFA students Mickey Kenny, Derek Askey, and Joanna Doxey. Everyone came to hear […]

Selections from Colorado Review is not good at April Fool’s pranks. We’re so bad at it, in fact, that we can’t even get the date right. Truth be told, we’re not even that funny. We were going to totally prank you by releasing the March podcast on April 1, April Fool’s Day. Hilarious, right? But then we screwed […]

Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Kristin George Bagdanov interviews Susanna Childress about her seven-part poem that appeared in the Summer 2011 issue of Colorado Review and the March podcast. I first encountered Susanna Childress’s poems while working on a review of her second book, Entering the House of Awe (Western Michigan University Press, 2011), for Ruminate […]

Better late than never, right? C’mon, am I right? You know I’m right. I always am. Always. So let’s just pretend this little delay never happened. Let’s all just pretend and nobody gets hurt. No kittens, no puppies, nobody. We can all just be cool about it. And while we’re all being so cool about […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo Your token gift-giving link for literary friends. If you’re like me, you haven’t started shopping yet, so here’s a head start with some “elegant and pithy” posters illustrating famous quotes by writers. Suspending reader disbelief for the moment is hard but suspending reader disbelief for an entire creative world is harder. […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo If you like Henry Miller and long-winded metaphors that liken writing to journeys, roads, paths, and the polarization of paradise and hell, you might enjoy The Wisdom of the Heart. The elusive agent: ever so mysterious and unreachable. Six months passes after you’ve submitted a proposal and still no word. You […]

Colorado Review Associate Editor Derek Askey interviews Matthew Shaer about his story “Ghosts,” which appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of Colorado Review as the winner of the 2012 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction, selected by Jane Hamilton. Read the full text of the story here, or listen to Shaer read the story on our […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo Home, home on the range, where the poets and writers play…okay, the Front Range (Denver, FoCo, Boulder area) is hosting readings this weekend featuring Dan Beachy-Quick, Elizabeth Robinson, Tina Brown and Sasha Steensen, among others. A map of events for your literary weekend. A robot that scans 250 pages a minute […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo If you haven’t realized it already, dialogue is perhaps the most complicated element of creative writing. Read “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” and the underlying meaning behind speech is apparent. Contrary to common advice, short story writer Thomas Lee argues it’s not possible to write what you […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo In the spirit of the 2012 lively, civilized and productive presidential election, The Poetry Foundation has matched former presidents with their poetic inspirations. Looking at these photographs, perhaps Roosevelt simply admired Robinson for his similar taste in spectacles and mustaches. Canadian artist, Guy Laramee, sculpts mind-blowing landscapes from volumes of books. […]

Dear friends, Did you accidentally eat yourself into a Halloween candy coma this week? If so, don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault. It was bound to happen. That said, gosh do I have just the thing for you! What better to accompany you on the couch in your gastronomical misery than the November […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo With the intention of prolonging Halloween so as not to be bombarded by Christmas carols and holiday shopping coupons: a montage of vintage horror paperbacks. Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, says you should pay attention to short stories–no, really? What’s next? Mary Karr writes country music? Well, yes. Nearly […]

By Abby Hill, Editorial Assistant There’s a lot of advice out there about how to write a cover letter when submitting to a literary journal. Some journals will be specific about the information they want, and some will simply just ask for a cover letter. Whether you’re submitting online or through the mail to […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo Wolverine Farm is now accepting nominations for 2013 Fort Collins Poet Laureate–nominate yourself! In honor of the World Series game two, Ron Silliman meditates on poetics in baseball. Halloween recommendation reads are typically Frankenstein and anything by Stephen King–red rum. But if you want something new to keep you up at […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo An exhausting, if not exhaustive, meta-list of writing rules from writers including Margaret Atwood’s “Do back exercises,” and “Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.” In the helpful spirit, Kurt Vonnegut gives eight tips in his own voice, such as […]

Well, kids, it’s October. Before you get all excited about dressing up, down, or sideways in your fancy Halloween costumes at the end of the month, I think we all need to sit down and have a talk. First off, eat your vegetables. It’s important. Second, we need to address a serious lack of culture […]

After a year on the job, our fiction editor, Steven Schwartz, offers some reflections on submitting stories. Reasons we accept stories: You had us at the title. (Okay, the first sentence.) * Not a cliché to be found, not even close; indeed, the authority of the voice feels immune to the very idea of […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo Chicago designer Jenny Volvoski reads a book and re-creates its cover art with challenging color and type limitations. While a theme of green, black, and white unifies the covers into a series, “Cover to Cover,” each cover is imagined in the individual likeness of its story. After hemming and hawing and […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo Hang on to your hats: After cryptically tip-toeing around with Gathering Blue and The Messenger, Lois Lowry has at last written a sequel to The Giver, the dystopian young adult novel that first captured our hearts for euthanasia and terror regimes in sixth grade. Behold Son. There are so many avenues […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo J.K. Rowling’s first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, released on Sept. 26th. If you didn’t preorder it, shame on you. The Daily Beast gives a first look into the “viciousness of Rowling’s new fictional village.” “Literary Buroughs”, a Ploughshares series’ exploring the local literary community, highlights Great Falls, MT: where […]

Gathered by Mandi Casolo If you’re in or near the Big Apple, make sure you swing by the Brooklyn Book Fest this weekend, September 23rd. It’s like a rock concert of writers: Joyce Carol Oates, Billy Collins, and Tony Danza, oh my! Brooklyn Book Fest banners are displayed on the columns of the NYPL in […]

Well, kids, it’s back to school season, which can mean only one thing: it’s time for me to box up all of my white Ocean Pacific T-shirts and store them upstairs in the attic until spring. And speaking of attics, hey, James Henry Knippen was kind enough to record his poem “Attic” for Selections from […]

The air conditioning in my car is broken, and the Miami Heat are in the NBA playoffs. That can only mean two things: it’s getting warmer, and my life is a little unfortunate right now. If you’re like me and can’t stand the heat, not only should you get out of the kitchen, you should […]

We took a month off, and we’re sorry. We took a month off because we had to, because we sat on the couch too long and ate too many Cheetos—whole bags of them at a time—and the comfortable couch and delicious snacks made us doughy and lazy. And for that, we’re sorry. But sometime around […]

Digital friends, we’re pleased to announce that the Spring 2012 edition of Colorado Review is now also available in digital format, in addition to our beautiful print format. The digital issue features all of the great content of the print edition. It comes in a tagged Adobe PDF that is compatible with Adobe Acrobat and […]

Dear poets, Due to a recent influx in submissions, we’ve closed our poetry submissions early for the year. Fiction submissions will remain open until our usual deadline of April 30. Nonfiction submissions are read and accepted year-round. We respect the hard work you put into your craft, and we would feel terrible guilt at not […]

No foolin’. Selections from Colorado Review doesn’t pull pranks or play practical jokes. We’re not going to jerk you around by flushing the toilet when you’re in the shower or pretending we got engaged last weekend to that guy you don’t like. We’re here to bring you great poetry and prose from Colorado Review, and that’s […]

Everyone knows the best holiday in February is on the 28. Everyone. Even Tina knows it, and she’s still non-ironically wearing Hypercolor shirts. Because Selections from Colorado Review is hip and cool and alternative and in-the-know, we waited until this exact date to release our February podcast where, by clicking this link, you can hear […]

This is a bonus episode of “Selections from Colorado Review.” Do not be alarmed by its presence. Do not attempt to fight it. Do not attempt to destroy it immediately lest it destroy you first, because by waiting long enough you will be able to confirm that it has no designs on destroying you at […]

Colorado Review Editorial Assistant (and Pennsylvania native) Derek Askey interviews Martin Cozza about his story “Pennsylvania Polka,” which appeared in the Summer 2010 issue (an excerpt follows this interview) Derek Askey: Among so many other things, what “Pennsylvania Polka” does well is capture (and in many ways hinges upon) its setting. What prompted the […]

“Selections from Colorado Review” must deliver fresh poetry and prose every month to its listeners and readers of Colorado Review. This isn’t a want thing, or a desire thing—it is a biologically-compelled-to-do-it thing, lest it suffer an unbearable and possibly fatal poetry and prose backup, which can be painful. Some people might find that fact […]

Look, “Selections from Colorado Review” has a few ground rules if you and it are going to take this relationship seriously—just before you get any ideas, okay? SFCR is in this to provide you, the internet-savvy, literature-loving consumer, with fresh poetry and prose from the pages of Colorado Review every month. That’s it. So no […]

Listen—a clatterin’ in the distance. The cattle were restless today; that old sheepdog gave a plaintive howl. “I know this sound,” murmured Ole Sal. “‘Tis ‘Selections from Colorado Review‘, the cattle-rustlinest podcast ever to deliver fresh poetry and prose from Colorado Review round these parts. Reckon by the sound of it they brought some nonfiction […]

The Wonder of It By Lauren Gullion, Associate Editor I recently sat down with fiction writer, Colorado State University creative writing professor, and Warren Wilson MFA faculty member Steven Schwartz to discuss his new role as fiction editor here at Colorado Review. The conversation—meant to be about Steven—quickly evolved into an enthralling contemplation on fiction […]

If you have been meaning to read Leslie Johnson’s “Other Lives,” from the Spring 2011 issue, but have for several months now had your efforts foiled by a series of eyeglasses-related accidents, each one more tragic than the last, hang up on your emergency optometrist: the very first fiction episode of “Selections from Colorado Review” […]

A cross-post from Brevity’s nonfiction blog by Colorado Review alumnus R. B. Moreno, now a doctoral student at the University of South Dakota’s creative writing program. Moreno’s other work can be found online at RBMoreno.com. Here’s a thought. Byliner.com’s debut nonfiction stems from several American wars. And for good reason. So often this is “the most powerful way in human […]

By Dan Moore Fans of poetry read by its authors and would-be mycophiliacs take heed: June’s “Selections from Colorado Review” has been released upon an unsuspecting internet, primarily because the internet has come to expect “Selections from Colorado Review” on the first Friday of every month. To make up for startling the internet like that, […]

Dan Moore, Colorado Review Editorial Assistant and Podcast Editor It is the first Friday of the month, and it is our goal as nascent podcasters and glossers-over of B. F. Skinner to condition Colorado Review readers to associate that particularly joyous occasion with the release of another episode of “Selections from Colorado Review,” the […]

As noted in our guidelines, Colorado Review closes its submission period on April 30 and re-opens on August 1. Starting this spring, however, we’re reading nonfiction year-round. It’s not that we don’t love fiction and poetry—we do!—but we just don’t get enough nonfiction. Between August 2010 and today, 54.74% of the online submissions have been […]

Colorado Review’s Managing Editor, Merrill Shane Jones, interviews Robert Boswell about his story “Destroy This,” which appears in the Spring 2011 issue (an excerpt follows this interview). Merrill Shane Jones: How did “Destroy This” come about? Can you talk a bit about the process? Robert Boswell: I don’t actually remember how I got started on […]

By Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Dan Moore Consider, if you will, some of the situations in which it is typically dangerous to read a literary journal: while driving, while jogging, while attempting to impress all your new-media friends with your casual disdain for paper content-delivery systems. For these scenarios, among others, we at Colorado Review […]

Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Nicholas Maistros interviews Shannon Cain, author of “Juniper Beach,” which appears in the Spring 2011 issue of CR Photo by Sarah Prall Nicholas Maistros: “Juniper Beach” is the story of a woman who spontaneously purchases an RV and embarks on a journey across the country. As a reader, I appreciated the […]

By Colorado Review Associate Editor Sarah Lin A few months ago, while in the middle of production for the Spring 2011 issue of Colorado Review, I was delighted to find myself reading for the first time Floyd Skloot‘s nonfiction piece “The Famous Recipe.” The essay details Skloot’s exploration of an intriguing, never-before-seen recipe authored by […]

With spring upon us and the end of the academic year almost in sight, the editors at Colorado Review have been seeking inspiration and enlightenment in our reading lists to give us that final push through to the close of the semester.

By Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Nicholas Maistros I found myself in line for the opening of the latest Harry Potter movie. The woman in front of me was anxiously reading the book version of the film we were about to see, saying to anyone who’d listen things like, “Oh, they better get it right” or […]

By Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Nicholas Maistros In a recent New Yorker article, “The Information: How the Internet Gets Inside Us,” Adam Gopnik chronicles the debate between the two camps who’ve amassed since the Internet boom: the Never-Betters, those who “believe that we’re on the brink of a new utopia, where information will be made […]

By Colorado Review Editorial Assistant Nicholas Maistros In a recent online interview with the Paris Review, novelist Michael Cunningham had this to say in response to the ongoing debate over the necessity of MFA programs: “Few people question artists going to art school, or musicians going to music school. There’s some strange romance about the […]

By Colorado Review Associate Editor Lauren Gullion Earlier this week, I wrote here to make my case in defense of Twitter as a viable tool for authors and other literary types. As we move into the weekend, I thought I’d offer up some tips on how we can engage in the social media game without […]

Twitter turned 5 years old this past Saturday (March 19). In recognition of this marker, NPR ran a story covering the platform’s background as well as the role it’s played in recent political movements around the world. But does Twitter play a worthwhile role in the literary world?

The Tournament of Books reached the end of its first round this weekend. That means it’s too late to get your bracket into the money at your office pool, but there’s still time to follow along with literature’s premier (mostly) single-elimination tournament of champions.

Bicyclists and our winged friends aren’t the only ones eager for spring. The beginning of March brings deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. It’s a full on smorgasbord of competitions for writers of all genres.

Enter LitPak, a rather nifty service from NewPages that debuted earlier this month. Here, available for viewing or download from a single page, are nearly two dozen PDFs advertising contests and calls for submission pertaining to February.

We want to remind the fiction writers out there that the deadline for the 2011 Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction is approaching: March 11. The writer of the winning story will receive $1,500, and the story will be published in the Fall/Winter 2011 issue of Colorado Review. Ron Carlson is the final judge. See complete […]

The 2011 Colorado Prize for Poetry, judged by Cole Swensen, is underway! We are accepting book-length poetry manuscripts now through the deadline of January 14, 2011. The author of the winning manuscript will receive $1,500 and the book will be published by the Center for Literary Publishing (that’s us!). And guess what! For the first […]

Years ago, when he was an intern here, Christopher Arigo (author of Lit interim and In the archives) came up with a list of his most disliked words used in poems. We don’t have that list anymore, but I clearly remember two words from it: gossamer and diaphanous. It’s no longer possible for me to […]

With the very generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Center for Literary Publishing will soon launch a new book series, the Mountain West Poetry Series. This series features poets who live in the Mountain West (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico). The first four titles in the […]

Colorado Review is among the many literary magazines in this excellent program launched by our good friends and supporters at CLMP: The Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) is rolling out an expanded catalogue for its Lit Mag Adoption Program for Creative Writing Courses. This program offers discounted subscriptions for selected literary magazines to […]

Our web site has been given a major makeover, thanks to the Talented Mr. Nolte, the web designer for CSU’s College of Liberal Arts (and a former CLP intern). You may recognize Drew’s work from such book covers as Brenda Is in the Room, The Lesser Fields, and Annulments. You can find more of his […]